


Alec's Method

by Brat2001



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Insecure Alec Lightwood, Lydia Branwell & Alec Lightwood Friendship, M/M, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 03:42:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18563212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brat2001/pseuds/Brat2001
Summary: Alec and Lydia marry due to Alec being threatened. Alec is miserable and so once Lydia has become pregnant and his family name will be continued, he commits suicide.





	Alec's Method

**Author's Note:**

> Triggering! Please don't read if suicide bothers you!

I smiled in silent relief as Lydia danced around in glee sharing the news we had just received. Lydia was pregnant and my duty was done. I was done.  
Three months ago, I had been happy. Then my parents found out about my boyfriend and I had been forced to marry Lydia under the threat of de-runing. At the time I had believed that this was the lesser of two evils, now I knew that I should have just stayed with Magnus. At least that way I could have been happy for a while and even if the ritual to de-rune me had killed me, I would have died happy.  
There were strict rules by which shadowhunters had to live and being gay went against those rules. When I was ordered to marry, I had initially protested, refusing with everything I had. Then they had threatened me with de-runing, following that with the promise that should I still be dating Magnus by the end of the week he would suffer an unfortunate accident. I couldn’t bear to be the cause of his death, I wouldn’t be able to live with the knowledge that I had killed him and so I did what I had to do.  
The news that I was marrying Lydia hurt him. I knew that it would, but I hadn’t realised quite how much. When he interrupted the wedding I was so close to giving up and going to him. Then I saw the knife in my mother’s hand and the look she gave to the guard at the door. I couldn’t. I felt my heart break as I forced myself to turn around and focus on binding myself to Lydia in this farce of a marriage.  
The second it was done, I had made myself a promise. I would play along until my parents would have a grandchild, someone to carry on the Lightwood name, then I would remove myself from the equation. Permanently. There is no such thing as a divorce when it comes to shadowhunters. The runes bind the two together until death. This way, with me gone, Lydia could go on to find a proper match and the child could be raised without my bad influence.  
The time was nearly here. Jace had been watching me closely since the wedding, probably picking up on my depression and reckless disregard for my life during missions from our parabatai bond but Lydia’s pregnancy was being celebrated with a party this evening and it wouldn’t be difficult or abnormal to leave early. I was counting down the hours I had left even as I wrote a series of letters that I would leave on or in my desk labelled with ‘in the event of my death’. My office was spotless, all paperwork done. It was ready for whoever would be appointed head of the institute after I was gone and one of the letters was addressed to whomever it would be containing any pertinent information they would need about current missions. I was ready once the letters were done.  
The letter for my siblings was harder to write than I had been expecting. It was difficult to write down everything I wanted to tell them without breaking down. 

Dear Jace and Izzy,  
I would like to begin by apologising for abandoning you. I am so sorry, but I can’t do this any more. I can’t keep up the pretence that everything is okay when I’m slowly suffocating. If it isn’t common knowledge, please don’t let on that my death was anything but a tragic accident.  
I want to make sure that you know that I love you both, you are amazing and you have always been there for me. This isn’t your fault, I didn’t want you to know and I've always been good at hiding my emotions, even from our bond Jace.  
Finally, don’t trust our parents. They will do whatever needs to be done to avoid scandal. They gave me no choice about marrying Lydia, threats of de-runing and killing Magnus made me obey pretty quickly and I couldn’t bring myself to ask for help. Please look after each other and Max, don’t let our parents brainwash him. Don’t get dragged into any trouble, I won’t be around to protect you any more.  
Please tell Lydia that I am sorry and help to raise our child correctly.  
I hope to see you again, but not any time soon.  
Love Alec.

Short and simple but it got my point across and I lacked the strength to write anything else. I contemplated writing one for Magnus and in the end decided to write one in the hopes that he would read it. I wasn’t holding my breath though. I decided to include everything, the threats, my struggles over the past three months and how much I regretted hurting him. Detailed and painful to write, it wound up being much longer than the one for my siblings and after writing it, I was even more certain of my choice of death.  
I had hurt him so much, I deserved to die slowly and painfully. An added bonus was the chance that the method I had chosen would result in my death being dismissed as an accident.  
The time of the party arrived. Almost everyone in the institute gathered in the briefing room, congratulating us on Lydia’s pregnancy, drinking and eating. After about an hour, Jace was pretty drunk and Izzy was flirting in the corner. It was time to make my exit.  
I snuck out of the institute quietly, carrying only one blade, and headed for the part of the city which was currently inhabited by a swarm of demons that I had assigned a team of ten to tackle tomorrow. At that point it would be too late for me.  
Apathy settled over me, making my pace increase and footsteps louder. The demons would show no mercy, they wouldn’t back down and they were not likely to kill me slowly or with any mercy. I knew my death would be slow and excruciating and I looked forward to it. I was ready for rest, a break from the stress of being the head of the institute and my brains never ending torment. The nightmares were the worst, I kept jolting awake with the image of Magnus’s face when I hurt him or his dead body behind my eyelids. Death would be an escape and a mercy.  
Three months of coping with never ending feelings of worthlessness and shame had left me eager for death. It wouldn’t be long now. The demons were no doubt tracking me already and no matter how good I was at fighting, even I couldn’t take on twenty lesser demons with just one blade and on my own. I wasn’t scared, wasn’t even apprehensive, after all, I had nothing to lose any more.  
As I approached the door of the warehouse that they had been spotted in, I raised an eyebrow in surprise. It would seem that the twenty lesser demons were being led by a greater demon which would explain the odd pattern of their victims. It also meant that I wouldn’t have a chance at accidentally killing all of the demons without dying.  
As I walked in, they all turned and looked at me and I tensed ready for a fight that I was throwing from the start. Within seconds, they were upon me and I was almost lost to the instincts that had kept me alive until now, careful the whole time to block the parabatai bond. I fought and I fought hard but within ten minutes I was injured, a poisoned wound that sapped my strength and soon allowed several more strikes from claws to land. Blood poured onto the hard concrete floor making it slippery and treacherous beneath my feet as I continued to fight as hard as I could despite the injuries. I needed to put up a good show, the demons that I didn’t manage to kill mustn’t be able to reveal that I was trying to die. The scene must look authentic.  
Half an hour in, I was struggling to block the parabatai bond as the agony spiked sharply with every heart beat and blood soaked the ground, mingling with the black ichor of the fifteen lesser demons I had taken down with me. My legs started to crumple beneath me as the blood loss became more and more extreme. It wouldn’t be long now, the greater demon would kill me with little effort and the five remaining lesser demons may do that for them.  
A sharp pain in my chest had me looking down. A sharp, blade-like tail emerged from the centre of my chest. Blood bubbled up my throat and across my lips as I collapsed to my knees. The world started to darken around the edges and a scream was wrenched from me as the tail twisted, bloody spittle spraying. This was my end, the numerous smaller, poisoned wounds would have killed me eventually and this was the one that would kill me quickly. Ending my pain.  
The intrusion was slowly, torturously slowly removed and the demons stood back to watch in glee as what blood I had left quickly drained from my chest and across my lips; I collapsed forward, rolling onto my side, coughing and wheezing as blood obstructed my airway and I choked on my own blood.  
Eventually, my vision went black and I took my last breath.  
Back at the institute:

Isabelle and Jace were looking for Alec, having noticed his absence and knowing about his dislike of crowds. Suddenly, Jace collapsed, clutching at his chest and his left shoulder over the parabatai rune. Isabelle turned sharply towards him, going pale when she saw Jace’s pale face and where he was clutching.  
“No.” she breathed. “Please no. Jace...What is happening? Where is he?”  
With a shudder of agony, Jace pulled his shirt away and, trembling, asked “Is it still there? I can’t feel him any more!”  
Isabelle slumped down next to him on the floor, frantic as she searched his shoulder and found a rune that had faded into a simple scar. “No. Please no. It’s faded. What has he done? Why? How?” she cried desperately before breaking down crying into Jace’s shirt.  
Meanwhile, in the briefing room, Lydia smiled sadly down at her wrist as the marriage rune faded out of existence. She had hoped he would change his mind and she had tried her best to convince him not to do it when he had said goodbye earlier. He would not accept that she did not mind him dating outside of their marriage bond and he was determined that he was a bad influence who didn’t deserve to be alive.  
He had asked that she not mention his death being suicide and so, deciding to honour his last wish, she ‘reacted’ as though she hadn’t been expecting it, before starting to genuinely cry for the man she had married, a man who had become a friend, a man who was too noble and self-sacrificing for his own good. She would miss him but she knew how much he had been struggling, how he had abused his body since they had married. He wouldn’t eat more than she forced him to, he wasn’t sleeping and he would blame himself for everything, believing himself worthless. Lydia comforted herself with the knowledge that at least he would be at peace now. He could rest without nightmares of Magnus.

Search teams were sent out the next morning. The intended team quickly found the scene of Alec’s final battle and dispatched the remaining demons, greater demon included. They gazed at his body, in awe of his strength and skill in killing fifteen demons on his own before succumbing to his injuries. His body was swiftly returned to the institute and readied for his funeral. 

After the funeral, Jace and Isabelle were sat in his office when they noticed the letters on his desk. Jace had felt everything Alec was feeling at the time of his death. He still woke up with nightmares about the feeling of something penetrating right through his chest and the feeling of perverse joy he received from Alec.  
He and Isabelle had been relying on each other for support over the past few days and the letter filled the room with a feeling of apprehension.  
With trembling fingers, Jace opened the last letter Alec would ever write to them. Curled into each other like newborn kittens they read the letter, each in floods of tears and incredibly angry with their parents by the end. They knew that Alec had been miserable in his marriage, especially after his break up with Magnus but they hadn’t realised the extent of his misery and neither believed the line about them always being there for him, although he had always been there for them.  
With just a glance the two stood, they needed to give Magnus the letter that Alec had addressed to him and inform him of Alec’s death. They were also ready to unleash hell at their parents once they could get them alone. They would not let this stand and whilst they were too late to help Alec, they could at least make sure that their parents knew that they were to blame. 

Magnus shut the door behind Jace and Isabelle slowly as he took in what he had been told. Looking down at the letter, he sighed in quiet grief. He had known that Alec would die eventually but he hadn’t expected it and they had not parted on good terms.  
Retreating into his sitting room he took a seat and summoned a cocktail. He knew instinctively that the letter would be difficult to read and he mentally prepared himself, feeling tears prickling at his eyes before he even began.  
By the end, Magnus was sobbing. He was enraged at the thought of the threats that had been necessary to force Alec to break up with him, whilst being pleased that Alec had valued their relationship to such a degree. He knew that they could have been brilliant together but now, now they wouldn’t get that chance. Standing slowly, feeling all of his centuries of age, Magnus pulled down his memory box, containing tokens from each of those he had loved but outlived. It may not be an arrowhead, but the letter was so much more than that. It expressed everything Alec had ever felt about Magnus, all of Alec’s insecurities, his worries, what he loved about Magnus and his reasons for the break up and committing suicide.  
Alec may be dead, but he would not be forgotten for as long as Magnus would live.

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is appreciated!  
> Please let me know if you spot any mistakes!


End file.
